PFPC Daily - December 29, 2004

"300 million Chinese drinking harmful water because of
pollution: official"

BEIJING (AFP) - Dec 22, 2004

Some 300 million people are drinking unsafe or harmful water
because more than 70 percent of China's rivers and lakes are
polluted, a top government official said Wednesday.

Wang Shucheng, minister of water resources, issued the grim
warning at a national conference for directors of water
resources bureau in the eastern city of Suzhou, the Xinhua
news agency said.

"Currently, 300 million Chinese people are drinking unsafe
water, among which 190 million are drinking water with
harmful substances above set standards," Wang said.

The Chinese government has allocated more than 18 billion
yuanbillion US dollars) to build 800,000 drinking water
projects in rural areas since 2000 and has set the lofty goal of
providing safe drinking water to every rural family by 2020,
although it has yet to work out how it will do so.

But many people in the countryside still lack safe drinking
water, Zhai Haohui, vice-minister of water resources, was
quoted as saying.

"More than 63 million peasants living in north, northwest,
northeast and east China plains are drinking water with
fluorine above set standard," he said.

Fluorine is a toxic chemical element.

In addition, 60 million people in 110 counties of Hunan,
Hubei, Jiangxi, Anhui, Jiangsu, Sichuan and Yunan provinces
are threatened by schistosomiasis, a parasitic disease, Zhai
said.

SOURCE:
http://www.terradaily.com/2004/041222140421.5dr8lx3d.html

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"Charity water project pours a shower of good"

China Daily - December 22, 2004

BEIJING, Dec. 22 -- Farmer Li Cuiqin took her first
shower in early November - the first since she got married
and settled down three decades ago.

The 52-year-old from Xia'anmen Village of Dingbian
County, Northwest China's Shaanxi Province, lives on the
Loess Plateau, one of the country's driest areas.

Li had to walk more than 1 hour to collect water from a
spring where dozens of local people queued day and night.

But thanks to the Mother Water Vault Programme
conducted by the China Women's Development Fund under
the All-China Women's Federation, a water vault was built in
Li's yard two months ago to collect rainwater.

"We suffered enough from water shortages and could see
no end," Li said. She, like many of her fellow farmers, suffers
from serious disease and arthritis from drinking
fluorine-loaded saline water drawn from local water sources.

"Now I have seen hope because I have cleaner water,"
said Li, who has also started to plant vegetables in her yard
and raise a sheep.

Rainfall has become the only water resource of Li's and
other villages in northern Shaanxi and North China's Inner
Mongolia and Yunnan in Southwest China, where the
programme helped local farmers build underground vaults.

A typical water vault has a big catch basin - about the size
of the yard floor standard covered with cement. Rain waters
inks from two or three holes through pipes to the basin
below.

After sedimentation and purification, the summer's
rainwater collection can provide drinking and irrigation water
for a family for almost a year.

The programme has helped roughly 1 million rural people
realize adequate water since 2001, said Qin Guoying, deputy
secretary-general of the fund.

"Most of the fund comes from donations from enterprises
and individuals," Qin said.

The US soft drink PepsiCo (China) has donated more than
2 million yuan (US$240,000) to build more than 1,400 water
vaults in Inner Mongolia and Shaanxi in the past three years,
helping more than 11,000 people.

SOURCE:
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-12/22/content_2365692.htm